04_Peters_copiaaa_67-84 28/04/15 12:15 Pagina 82 82 JANELLE PETERS value of the crown in the contested world of the present with the value of the crown of the eternal world of the future. The bestowal of crowns by the state and civic bodies implied that the state and civic bodies had the power to decide who was worthy of deification. Crowns bestowed by the citizen body and the competitions for its glory often meant that civic honors were translated into eternal re- wards. Portraits of the dead often envision the dead wearing a crown, usually of laurel, which represents the “crown of life” bestowed upon individuals whose virtues have won for them apotheosis 51. At the level of Roman imperialism, the state prerogative to crown is evident in the crown of thorns worn by Jesus. Goodenough trans- lated the crown placed on Jesus’ head at his execution as a “crown of acanthus” (Mark 15,17, Matt 27,29, John 19,2-5) to convey a sense of ironic representation of the immortal athlete 52. Cohen sees this irony as being related to the kingship attributed to Jesus and the greater prominence given to royal headdress by the Has- moneans 53. With either translation, Jesus’ crown of thorns is meant by the Roman legal apparatus to highlight his dead status and to subvert the glory of his personal eschatology 54. Paul’s claim that the individual does not receive a perishable crown but an imperishable one also critiques the funerary associa- tions of many pagan athletic competitions. That there is cultural re- sistance to the state’s claim to have control of the deceased even after death can be seen in the narrative subversion of the spectacle in Apuleius’ Metamorphoses or the Golden Ass. For Apuleius’ an- tagonist-cum-protagonist, Lucius, the crown symbolizes redemp- tion to humanity and participation in eternal life. Having narrowly missed being exhibited as part of the spectacle, Lucius has a redemptive 51 F. CUMONT, “Un fragment de sarcophagi judéo-paien”, Revue Archéo- logique 4 (1916) 1-16. 52 E.R. GOODENOUGH – C. B. WELLES, “The Crown of Acanthus (?)”, HTR 46 (1953) 241-242. 53 S.A. COHEN, The Three Crowns. Structures of Communal Politics in Early Rabbinic Jewry (Cambridge 1990) 16. 54 The crown of thorns implies athletic victory not for the individual but for the entire city or society. See A. WEISSENRIEDER, “The Crown of Thorns: Iconographic Approaches and the New Testament”, Iconography and Biblical Studies. Proceedings of the Iconography Sessions at the Joint EABS / SBL Con- ference, 22–26 July 2007, Vienna, Austria (eds. I. DE HULSTER – R. SCHMITT) (AOAT 361; Münster 2009) 113-138.